


xanthous

by drivingnotwashing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also kind of, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Amputation, Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, It's really hard to explain, M/M, Minor Bela Talbot/Dean Winchester, Past Relationship(s), Robotics, Sibling Incest, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28441845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drivingnotwashing/pseuds/drivingnotwashing
Summary: He’s two streets out of Chicago, parked somewhere near a gas station that sells instant ramen next to revolvers. It’s a warm enough night that he can lie on the hood of his car without his jacket on, and it also means he doesn’t have to worry about the humidity making its way into the cogs of his leg. He hates Chicago because of the rain, other than that he thinks it’s a quite good place to make a living, but his prosthetic aches at any signs of a monsoon and while he always could invest in a better one, Dean’s done letting people attach things to his body. Especially not after what happened to his brother. If Dean can go the rest of his life without seeing a Cyberware surgeon, he’ll be happy.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	xanthous

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea how to preface this, but here goes nothing; hey! i hope you're enjoying this holiday period and that 2021 will treat you more kindly than the year we've just had. i'm working on a lot of fics for the new year and i hope you'll all read them! in the meantime, here is a... strange thing that came to me while i was playing cyberpunk 2077 and that just wouldn't leave me alone until i wrote it down.
> 
> as always; if you don't like the ship, the concept, please don't read! and if you do, enjoy!

Bela is late.

It shouldn’t be surprising, not after five years of working in close collaboration with her but it irritates Dean each time he has to wait around for her. He’s already smoked five more cigarettes than he’s allowed and he’s itching for a sixth one, his dark red fingernails are digging into the side of his hip to ease the urge, if he has to wait another hour, he’ll probably develop lung cancer.

He’s two streets out of Chicago, parked somewhere near a gas station that sells instant ramen next to revolvers. It’s a warm enough night that he can lie on the hood of his car without his jacket on, and it also means he doesn’t have to worry about the humidity making its way into the cogs of his leg. He hates Chicago because of the rain, other than that he thinks it’s a quite good place to make a living, but his prosthetic aches at any signs of a monsoon and while he always could invest in a better one, Dean’s done letting people attach things to his body. Especially not after what happened to his brother. If Dean can go the rest of his life without seeing a Cyberware surgeon, he’ll be happy. 

He’s typing quickly on his phone and it’s useless really, no amount of sneaky research on an online thesaurus will help him beat Bobby at scrabble, but he’s bored enough to try. He puts down bombardment for twenty and waits, a ring tells him Bobby just scored thirty-eight points with yet another drug name, life is unfair in so many ways.

He sighs and reaches for his pack of cigarettes, he’s the weak-willed one in his family after all but he’s stopped in his tracks when a sleek black motorcycle lines up next to him. He can recognise Bela even with her helmet on, the mantis blades poking out of her fur coat are a dead giveaway. She takes off her helmet with the same grace she puts in everything she does, from chopping people up to painting her nails, she’s smiling widely and Dean can just tell from here that she’s going to be insufferable. 

“Dean!” She struts to him confidently and Dean will never get why she keeps on wearing those heeled boots everywhere she goes, it just can’t be practical to walk in those, let alone drive, but he has to admit they do look good on her. 

“Bela,” He slides off the Impala, even with her added ten inches, she’s still shorter than him, it’s awfully satisfying. “You’re late.”

“Business takes time, dear, you of all people should know that.” She dusts something off his shoulder, getting in his space. She’s always liked doing this, tethering the line between provocation and seduction, maybe she thought they were both the same thing. Maybe she was right.

“I also know time is money, Bela, and I don’t have all day.” 

She hums and takes something out of her pockets, a large blue polished payment card, “This is for Singer,” and a small grey software chip, “And this is for you.”

Dean’s fingers clench tightly around both, “Were you followed?”

Bela huffs, “Do I look like an amateur?”

“Let me ask it like this, were you careful?”

“No one will track you, Dean, don’t worry.” She seems genuine for one moment, “I know how to do my job.”

He nods, “Better safe than sorry.”

“Yes, I know the saying,” She stares at him and something in her eyes makes Dean cagey, “Is it true then?”

“What?”

She presses her thumb into her own palm, it’s a strange sight, a nervous Bela Talbot. “There are rumors,” Dean’s blood freezes in his veins, “About Sam.”

“Sam’s fine.” 

“Dean-”

“My brother is fine, Bela, you should know not to trust Walt and Roy’s bar stories.” He pockets the card and the chip before throwing his car door open.

A hand on his shoulder stops him from driving away, “If he’s less fine than you’re letting me know,” She shushes him with a look, “If it _happens to be the case_ , you know where to find me.”

He watches her, taking in her perfectly curled hair, the shine of her Zetatech earring prosthetics, her lined red lips. Back a time, when he was younger and dumber, he’d been quite a bit in love with Bela Talbot, not a wholesome puppy love, not even a deep passionate one, but the soft sort of _what-if_ pinch that always left him feeling restless in her presence. He wasn’t that guy anymore and Bela wasn’t the savvy, sweet girl she’d been back there either but each time he saw her, he could recall a little clearer what that Dean had felt under her gaze.

“Is it pity I see in your eyes, Bela?”

She sighs, he smiles, it’s a dance they’ve practised before. “Forget I said anything, you conceited troglodyte.”

He grabs her wrist as she walks away, she turns, just slightly, “Thanks.” He doesn’t say more, he doesn’t need to, she understands. He does, too.

The ride back to Bobby’s cache is long and dull, the music on the radio is okay but Dean feels the emptiness in the car with each mile he crosses, the silence next to him, where Sam should be breathlessly mouthing the words to pop-funk songs, weighs on him like lead.

Three months ago, Sam disappeared. It was a simple as that, one minute he was getting Dean some pie in a roadside diner, ( _Apple or cherry, Sammy!_ ) and the next, the diner was surrounded by black cars, raided by men in suits and Dean, who hadn’t even been able to pass the first two guys who’d restrained him, had watched as they took his baby brother away with a nylon bag on his head. He had screamed himself hoarse, that night, he’d even tried to bite the men who had his arms pinned in his back, but it was too late, Sam was gone and Dean, ever the failure, had only found him three days later. Except he hadn’t truly found his brother, not the one he’d watched get taken. 

He had found _parts_.

He’d found Sam unravelled into something barely human, his limbs dislocated from his body and his joint encased in metal and wires. His chest, naked and open, where a symbiotic heart pumped a liquid that no longer looked like blood, had been laid on a mattress, his head, dark hair falling over surgery red eyelids, was a few feet away. 

At sunset, Dean had gathered up all the parts of Sam, his legs, long and strong, had still felt warm to the touch, his hands had been soft and pliable. He’d felt alive under Dean’s fingertips, there was no morbid rigidity, no smell of decay, just Sam’s hot, golden skin stretched over parts that all still fit together but needed to be reunited. It had taken barely an hour for Dean to put the jigsaw that was his brother’s body back together. But Sam hadn’t woken up.

Now, his hands on the steering wheel grip the leather tighter, the memory of that day, of that late afternoon searching the ruins of Cold Oak still made him sick to his stomach. He takes the highway, usually, he’d tried to avoid it, he doesn’t like going through five checkpoints just do go a little further south, but it’s quicker than the backend roads he’s fond of, and he needs to get back to the house, needs to get back to Sam. He gets there under twenty hours and when he parks, he has a hard time removing his foot from the pedal. 

Bobby needs to relocate his hideout every two months, this one in the list of dubious houses they’ve inhabited, is right at the top. Nothing grows here, there are no trees, no flowers, and not even a few recalcitrant weeds, just scorched earth and sand that will sneak inside the mechanism of Dean’s knee. No matter, it’s free isolated, and it has running water, Dean won’t complain, he’s stayed at worse places over the years. 

The dog waits for him on the porch, Rumsfeld is old, fat and blind as a bat, no amount of ocular systems replacements will change that, but he’s a good, loyal dog who has always guarded their home, wherever it has been. Dean admits having a particular soft spot for the hound, he’s known him since he was a child and his father still drove him and his brother to Bobby’s for minor repairs, and Rumsfeld had always loved Sam, had always followed that little punk everywhere, had always licked at his face and made his sunny baby brother laugh with might. Dean pets the mutt on his way inside, Rumsfeld’s fur is rough to the touch but the happy sound he makes is worth it. 

Bobby waits by the door with a shotgun in hand, it must say something about Dean that he finds the sight comforting.

“Hey Bobby,” He throws an arm over the older man’s shoulder and slides the payment card to him with his other hand, he knows to always pay upfront. “Everything go okay while I was gone?”

Bobby puts the card in the pouch of his blue coveralls, the sweat on his forehead makes the edges of his baseball cap darker. “Not a peep.” He says, and Dean nods. It isn’t exactly good news, but it’s not bad either. 

He doesn’t make small talk, he just passes Bobby, settles his backpack on a chair and climbs the few stairs that separate the main, and only room, of the house to the one bedroom that has been dubbed Sam’s. 

There’s no light inside the room, Sam doesn’t need it, but Dean does and he opens the curtains before he takes a look at his brother. He needs to pace himself, his heartbeat has quickened since he entered and he thinks that when he finally sees Sam, he might break a little bit inside. But he doesn’t have a choice, and he turns, with his hands made into shaking white fists. He looks at his brother; it punches the wind out of him.

Sam isn’t the same, even with all of his parts put back together, even completed, there is an edge to him that wasn’t there before, a pressure in the air around him, it makes Dean’s mouth sour. The joints of Sam’s body, the ones Dean had reattached lovingly to his torso, glow with a rich honey color, just like the liquid that pump in his veins now. His body is bright, the shape of it cuts a frame on the wan sheets he’s enveloped in. He’s beautiful, he’s changed, Dean is not sure why but he mourns something he has not lost yet.

“Sammy,” He whispers, sitting next to his brother’s motionless form. Sam hasn’t opened his eyes since Dean’s found him, he has breathed either. But there’s a heart beating under Dean’s fingers, and there is warmth in his brother’s body. Sam is not dead, but he’s not alive either.

In stasis, Bobby had said when he’d seen him for the first time, waiting.

“Sammy,” Dean repeats, slow and deep, just over his brother’s pink lips. He lets himself steal a kiss, just one, not that Sam will mind, he’s said quite a few times, and with lewd enthusiasm, how he doesn’t mind if Dean pushes and pulls a bit while he sleeps. But Dean doesn’t want to take more, not when Sam isn’t actually sleeping, when there might be a chance that he won’t wake up at all. “I’m here, Sam.”

It wasn’t always like this, he and Sam, they weren’t made tangled in each other this way. It isn’t a forever kind of thing, but it’s damn close. Just four years from always, four years of Dean’s life where he didn’t belong to Sam body and soul, only because Sam hadn’t born quite yet. But at his brother’s first breath, Dean had felt it, the tug of worship, the thread around his heart that Sam had weaved between them just by existing.

It grew more and more with each passing year and by the time Sam was sixteen, Dean couldn’t lie to himself anymore, couldn’t try to stay in the dark when only a look from Sam lit him up from the inside. They never told anyone, never told their father especially who died not nearly knowing as much about his sons as he thought, but people had guessed, had made assumptions. They never really felt the need to deny, the world they live in doesn’t delve too much in morality, neither does Dean, not about this.

He puts a hand on his brother’s cheek, turning his head slightly, he cups and caresses, the want in his guts, the one that scream at him to dig his way through Sam’s ribs and live inside his the cavernous valves of his heart tell him to cherish and coddle, but he can’t right now, he’ll pamper Sam later, when he opens his eyes.

Dean misses the ocean foam color that is Sam’s and just Sam’s, he misses the way his brother’s gaze reaches in him and destroys all of Dean’s thoughts when it darkens with love and desire, turning to rubble all of Dean’s reason like a wave crashing into brittle wood. 

He pushes Sam’s hair away, keeping the denser lockers between two fingers as he tries to open the port inside his brother’s skull, the same one that has been installed in everyone’s head when they turn thirteen. Sam’s port is worn far more than Dean’s, his brother has always loved abusing the random knowledge cards they can get their hands on. Sam has probably a few encyclopedias engraved in his brain. The port’s latch opens, Dean puts the software card, the one he paid Bela so much money to get, and waits.

He hears the purr of the gear inside his brother’s head; he hears the soft breaths that come out of his mouth but that aren’t made by his throat, the noises of a program getting installed. It’s basically a cheat code, a way to kick start Sam’s brain into action, a sort of mechanical steroid that will bypass whatever is making Sam immobile. Dean waits, drums his fingers on Sam’s bare arm. He sees Sam’s eyes move under his eyelids, he sees his mouth open and take a breath, he watches, entranced as Sam’s chest moves up and down, _alive_.

He gets closer, waits for the moment Sam will look back at him. He’s so happy he could cry, and he thinks he is, he can feel something drop from his chin, wet on his shirt. Sam’s going to be okay, Dean’s fixed him, Dean will always fix him. He waits and holds Sam’s hand, kisses the soft knuckles, the ones he has bandaged over and over again for what feels like an eternity. A groan, low and rich, Sam opens his eyes. The sun has dried the ocean.

Sam’s eyes are yellow.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are deeply appreciated!!
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://itstartswithbloodshed.tumblr.com/)


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